Unemployment Benefits

If you're denied unemployment benefits keep these things in mind: While making your appeal, continue to file and claim your weeks. If you win, you'll only be paid for weeks you claimed. Continue to look for work, record that activity and take the steps necessary to remain eligible. Move quickly: If you miss the 20-day window to appeal, you could be out of luck. If you have a lawyer friend, consider asking for help. More information: Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation http://www.

By William E. Gibson and Jim Stratton, Orlando Sentinel, February 8, 2014

Despite creating more than 460,000 jobs since 2010, Florida ranks second among states with workers who have been unemployed for at least six months, researchers say. Using federal employment numbers, the Economic Policy Institute of Washington, D.C., a progressive think tank, calculates that 46.2 percent of laid-off Floridians were out of work for at least that long last year. Only New Jersey and Washington, D.C., have a greater share of long-term unemployed, both at 46.6 percent.

As many as 40,000 Floridians a week could see their unemployment benefits lapse starting Monday because Congress adjourned for spring recess without agreeing on a mechanism to extend the funds. The Senate failed to pass a 30-day reauthorization of the package that provides jobless benefits and health-insurance subsidies to millions of laid-off workers. The dispute again centered on how to pay for the measure. Republicans, led by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, wanted to tap economic-stimulus money, but Democrats said that cash was set aside for job-creation programs.

Democrats in Congress have succeeded at a new approach: They threaten Republicans with sequestration being horrible for the country, when their spending is wrecking the future of this country. The Republican/business task force on the mandatory sick-leave law says to the farmer: Foxes say there is no need for a higher fence around the chicken coop. Gov. Chris Christie takes responsibility for those who work for him and apologizes. What a refreshing turnaround from our current president, who denies everything.

An extension of jobless benefits enacted this summer expires Dec. 1. Last week a bill backed by most Democrats to extend them for three months failed in the House. Republicans opposed the legislation because they were denied a chance to attach spending cuts. Republicans say they're willing to extend the benefits but don't want to add the cost -- $12.5 billion for three months -- to the nation's $13.8 trillion national debt. Democrats say that the benefits will stimulate the economy, and Republicans can't claim to be concerned about the deficit when they are still pushing to extend tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

The House Employee and Management Relations Committee has approved a $20 increase in maximum unemployment benefits, which would set the top benefit at $245 a week.''These people are laid-off Pan Am employees, Eastern Airlines employees, people who've been laid off from the various banking operations that have shut down,'' said sponsor Rep. Fred Lippman, D-Hollywood. ''They are people who are suffering, through no fault of their own.''Current law limits payments to half of a worker's salary, up to $225 a week.

The Florida House of Representatives tentatively approved a plan Wednesday that would slash unemployment benefits for out-of-work Floridians and pass much of the savings on to businesses. The sweeping legislation would both cut the maximum number of weeks unemployed workers could receive state payments from 26 to 20 and reduce the tax charged to businesses to pay for the program. It would also make it easier for businesses to deny benefits. A top priority of the state's business lobby, the unemployment-compensation package was the first substantive measure taken up on the floor of the House in the 2011 legislative session, which opened Tuesday.

President Bush vetoed extending unemployment benefits Friday, and nobody seemed to notice, much less care.The nation was so fixated with the Clarence Thomas ordeal, with Anita Hill's credible testimony and Thomas' just-as-credible defense of his name and honor that the issue of 3 million laid-off Americans just didn't seem very important.The veto news didn't make the front page of many newspapers, at least none I saw. And radio talk shows that hammered Bush on the unemployment issue for weeks plum forgot Friday that Bush had, for the second time this year, turned his back on people in a recession.

A just-passed overhaul of Florida's unemployment laws gives employers the ability to challenge jobless benefits to former employees for behavior that has little to do with how they conduct themselves at work. The provision permits businesses to fight a worker's benefits claim based on "misconduct, irrespective of whether the misconduct occurs at the workplace or during working hours. " In essence, it allows the business to cite a worker's private behavior as a reason to deny benefits.

WASHINGTON -- Democrats called on Republicans to extend unemployment benefits for nearly 1 million jobless workers Saturday, likening the House's failure to do so to "playing Scrooge at Christmastime." In the Democrats' weekly radio address, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., urged President Bush and his fellow Republicans, who will control the Senate and the House in January, to make extending benefits a priority. As of Dec. 28, federal unemployment benefits will expire for more than 800,000 unemployed workers.

The arctic freeze that has gripped the nation is an apt metaphor for the harsh conditions Congress inflicted on 1.3 million long-term unemployed workers - a number growing by 10,000, on average, each day - when it left for the holidays without renewing the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program. In Florida alone, 73,000 long-term unemployed workers lost benefits abruptly at the end of the year, and another 95,300 will reach the end of state benefits over the next six months with neither jobs nor federal benefits to support them unless Congress acts to restore and renew this vital program.

Up-close look at SeaWorld I applaud the full-page advertisement by SeaWorld in Friday's Sentinel. Before any group canceled its gig at SeaWorld, would it have made sense to take a trip there and see the work being done, instead of blindly following others who pulled out? Could any of the band members tell why they are opposed to SeaWorld, and more important, did they really care why? SeaWorld has such a wonderful program. If these groups would take the time to talk to the professionals and see the work that they do each day behind the scenes, I believe they would be impressed.

Right now, much of America is fired up about Barack Obama's problem-plagued website for the new health-care act. As well they should be. It's an inexcusable mess. Republicans are fuming. Democrats are convening hearings. Everyone is demanding answers. Yet here in Florida, the state has rolled out a costly dud of a website as well - one that's delaying people from money they need for rent and utilities - and hardly anyone's saying squat. We're talking about the state's new unemployment system - a website on which Florida spent more than $60 million in federal money to supposedly improve.

Here we go again. After years of preparation, and millions of dollars spent to set it up, another troubled government website fails to launch properly and leaves thousands of frustrated users facing penalties if they can't access the website in a timely fashion. Government officials knew there would be problems, but pressed on after delaying the initial launch and spending more than $6 million to ensure a better rollout. Sound familiar? This time, the problem isn't the fault of Obamacare.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is calling for a federal investigation into the state's troubled roll-out of its new $63 million unemployment claims processing system. Nelson, a Florida Democrat, asked the U.S. Department of Labor to look into launch of "CONNECT," the new system through which people seeking unemployment benefits must file their claims. Since the network's debut two weeks ago, the Department of Economic Opportunity has been deluged by complaints from users who say the new system is not working.

Look, I've worked in newspapers for 20 years, so I know that big, complicated organizations breed mistakes like standing water breeds mosquitoes. Messages get botched, deadlines are missed, computers collapse. Stuff, as they say, happens. But after four years of writing about the economy, I can still be stunned by the new and exciting ways the state finds to mishandle a laid-off worker's request for unemployment benefits. There must be a special task force involved. Which brings me to the story of Orlando resident Michael Vitale.

If you're one of nearly 800,000 Floridians searching for a job, don't think of yourself as unemployed anymore. Think of yourself as someone moving along the "re-employment" process. Effective Sunday, Florida becomes the first state in the nation to rebrand its Unemployment Compensation Benefits Program to the Reemployment Assistance Program. The name change was incorporated in legislation passed in the last session, which also significantly reduced unemployment taxes paid by businesses statewide.

When I think of folks who desperately need and deserve unemployment benefits even to approach the mirage of scratching by, I think of people such as Alina Puerta. Here's a woman who hasn't worked a steady job since 2009 when the downsizing real-estate firm for which the Orlando woman worked for five years reckoned it could get by with one fewer title processor. It hasn't been for lack of trying, trying and trying to land a permanent gig in a tight job market that runs from applicants with crow's feet.

Jobless injustice Floridians who lose their jobs have had a much harder time collecting unemployment benefits since state lawmakers tightened eligibility rules in 2011. The number of applications denied since then has risen by 140 percent. So we can only imagine how the news about former Osceola County School Board Chairwoman Cindy Hartig was received by jobless Floridians who were denied benefits. Probably a combination of disbelief and fury that Hartig has gotten preliminary approval for benefits after voters kicked her out of her part-time post last year.